A New Way to Learn Chinese

Entrepreneur ShaoLan Hsueh aims to bridge the gap between East and West by teaching Westerners how to read Chinese

Entrepreneur and author ShaoLan Hsueh aims to teach English speakers how to start reading Chinese in under 10 minutes. See an excerpt for the video that was produced for her Kickstarter campaign. (Photo/Video: Chineasy)

By

Alexandra Wolfe

March 14, 2014 8:37 p.m. ET

Entrepreneur and author ShaoLan Hsueh thinks that English-speakers can start learning to read Chinese in less than 10 minutes. The language, she says, has more than 20,000 written characters, which most students in China learn by rote memorization. Ms. Hsueh's new book, "Chineasy," aims to simplify the symbols with colorful pictograms. "I'm not expecting people to be able to write a university dissertation after reading my book," she says. But it could mean the difference between ordering a steak or a snake from a Chinese menu.

After a TED conference talk in spring 2013 that has since drawn some 2 million online viewers, Ms. Hsueh, 42, launched what she calls a "social movement" to bridge the gap between the East and West by making written Chinese more accessible. Many characters were constructed to depict the words they stood for—the one for person, for example, looks somewhat like a stick figure walking. Her book takes some of those characters and overlays simple designs on top of them to help readers make the connections between the symbol and the word. Learning about those connections, she says, reveals important nuances of Chinese culture and history.

Over green tea in the lobby restaurant of her Manhattan hotel, the Taipei-born, London-based Ms. Hsueh describes why the symbol for the verb "to come" looks like wheat—because wheat used "to come" from Europe. The character representing the word "woman" was originally supposed to depict a wife bending down before her husband.

Some words build on one or more characters put together, so once you master a handful of basic building blocks, she says, learning new characters becomes much easier. Two woman characters together mean "argument," and three in a row means "adultery." "It shows gender inequality," says Ms. Hsueh. Why do two women mean "argument?" In ancient China, "they had three or four generations all underneath the same roof, and the women, they argue," she explains. "Any middle-upper class Chinese man had multiple wives." Ms. Hsueh's grandfather had at least two wives who all lived together, for example. But, as she herself saw in that case, "it was very peaceful," she says with a smile.

ENLARGE

Chinese 'characters say so much more than the spoken language,' says ShaoLan Hsueh.
Spencer Heyfron for The Wall Street Journal; Hair & Makeup by Nickee David

Ms. Hsueh's book arrives as more U.S. students are learning Chinese. Nancy Rhodes of the Center for Applied Linguistics, a national language research and resource nonprofit, says that the percentage of secondary schools teaching Mandarin has increased from 1% in 1997 to 4% in 2008 (the most recent year available). Meanwhile, the percentage of schools teaching French dropped from 64% to 46% in the same period, especially as schools face budget cuts. The number of enrollments in college Chinese language classes was more than 60,000 in 2009, up from around 34,000 in 2002, according to the Modern Language Association.

Born in 1971 to a calligrapher mother and a ceramic artist father, Ms. Hsueh grew up in Taipei. She started a series of well-received Microsoft user manuals at age 22 while studying for her M.B.A. Soon after, she co-founded an Internet company. In 2001, she moved to Britain, where she earned a graduate degree in international relations from Cambridge. Still interested in software and technology, she went on to become a venture capitalist in London. "My career has been using my left brain much more," she says. But decades after growing up around her parents' artwork, she says she is now "connecting the dots much more and connecting my life experience in the East and the West."

That effort began when her children, now 9 and 11, were born. They spoke English as their first language and weren't interested in learning their mother's native tongue. "They said, 'It's not cool,' " she remembers. "I was so frustrated."

After she put her children to bed, she would stay up late on her computer trying to find a simple way to teach them to read the language. Ms. Hsueh discovered that many words stem from eight to 12 basic characters, such as a square symbol meaning "mouth," that other words and phrases expand upon. For example, two mouth-shaped characters together mean "shout." And the characters for "person" and "tree" together mean "rest." Think of it this way, she says: A shady tree would have been a good place to take a break in ancient China.

Learning Chinese Through Pictograms

Author ShaoLan Hsueh thinks that English-speakers can start learning to read Chinese in less than 10 minutes. Her new book, "Chineasy," aims to simplify Chinese symbols with colorful pictograms. ShaoLan

Ms. Hsueh opens her laptop to show an intricate heat map she built of characters and phrases stemming from these simple forms. She used that map as the basis for teaching her children written Chinese, drawing the symbols on napkins for them.

This was all a hobby until she mentioned her system to an organizer of the TED conference, where she had been a regular attendee since 1999. That led to her talk in 2013. Within days, she says, she had thousands of emails from people asking her to expand the concept. She then hired illustrators to make "charming and innocent illustrations" to give her concept an entertaining and easily understandable design.

Last August, Ms. Hsueh raised more than $300,000 on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter—well over the $125,000 that she originally asked for—to build a second set of characters and phrases and create a Chineasy iPhone app and online education materials. Now she has a team of 12 full-time and freelance workers, including designers, animators and developers. She also has a website and a Facebook page where community members can answer each other's questions about her method. "It can't be an almighty curriculum," she says.

She hopes that her system will help to build "mutual understanding and communication" between East and West. "Language says so much about someone's mentality, about why they make things a certain way and why they behave a certain way," she says. In written Chinese in particular, the "characters say so much more than the spoken language," she says. And there's hope that foreigners can learn: Whereas learning the word "sun" in English means imprinting the letters s-u-n on your mind, the word for sun in Chinese requires only imagining its shape.

Ms. Hsueh is now working on a follow-up book that will expand the characters and phrases that she currently teaches. She likes to think that her system goes beyond simply teaching language. "It's a concept that nothing is really that difficult as long as we find a way of communicating," she says. "You just need to put [in] a little effort, then you can really understand quite quickly."

Her ultimate goal is to change people's perception of China and give them a greater appreciation of its culture. "When people travel to China and they have to deal with the Chinese, they automatically shut down because they think it's such a mysterious country," she says. "That image is totally unnecessary."

Thanks for sharing! This is a interesting way to learn Chinese! However this is not new and the way to learn Chinese, in my opinion, would be losing its flare in the long run. Learning a language is a repeating and consistent process, it takes time and efforts! Fortunately there is a shortcut to learn the language, which is to learn the radical of the characters first, which by itself usually has a hint from the writing (or drawing) and then forms the character.

Many thought it is difficult to learn Mandarin Chinese. In my view, it is not true! It takes time and efforts to learn it well, but what doesn’t? On the contrary, Chinese is one of the most interesting languages in the world to learn! Because Chinese is a picture language, which means ancient Chinese people draw different pictures as Chinese characters out of everything they saw in the environment!

By the way, I’m teaching Chinese online via Skype, add me to have a FREE Trial! My skype name is : chinese.tutor.frank or FOR MORE INFO GO TO http://www.chinesehulu.comCheers!

I've lived in China for 13 years now. I have very basic knowledge of Chinese characters (300 or so) and something above survival skills and below fully conversational speaking ability. I've also studied French, Spanish and German. I admit to giving up on studying Chinese. The amount of work needed to significantly change my life here wasn't worth detracting time from my family, work and other interests. As for the discussion about what languages are easier to learn. Chinese grammar is simpler by far. No plural endings, no conjugating verbs, no verbs with different cases or nouns with different genders. All languages have slang and phrases that don't make sense translated literally. On the downside, there are a lot of homonyms, my husband (his account here) once said a phrase and I had it completely wrong for his meaning, every word, though what I translated was fully correct except for the tones of one or 2 words. Also missing is a lot of passive learning. If I am driving around town and pass a shop with medicines and bandages and a red cross in the window, I can look at the sign and know that Apotheke means pharmacy in German. I'll know how to read it, say it, and write it just from driving past a few times, or even just once if I concentrate. Here, I pass the pharmacy and I see ??? I might see a part that I recognize that gives a hint to sound or meaning, but unless I have a photographic memory or a paper and pen, I still don't know how to say it, may or may not recognize it in writing, and certainly can't write it.

While I applaud efforts to encourage those intimidated by Chinese, I agree that this method is only for basic level learning. I have been living in China for the last 5 years and can speak well and read relatively well. This has only come through creating my own system of associations for Chinese characters and by persistent relevant learning with apps like WCC Bigram (Android/iOS).

One thing no one has mentioned is how the simplification for Chinese has even more so cut off ties to the image=meaning concept. Take ?? and ?? - both use exactly the same ?, but in traditional Chinese they are completely different. Try explaining that with a simple picture...

Computer and internet technology has advanced so much recently, it could well be used more to learn to read and write Mandarin, in the hands of professional teachers and programmers. For example, spaced repetition software (like flashcards) and touchpads for stroke order of characters can be used, or you can hire a native speaker to practice over Skype. Thus it is a pity that (according to Amazon reviewers) the Kindle edition of "Chineasy" is practically unusable. It is locked so there is no way to enlarge the tiny unreadable characters or fix the mix of traditional and simplified characters or change the unreadable violet color of some. Note that MIT's Open Courseware has an free introductiory Mandarin course (and you can buy the excellent textbooks, now for a second year), but it starts for an extended period with only pinyin, just like elementary students in China do.

You can spend a life time learning Chinese and still not be proficient at it. Characters as a language is obsolete. It makes great art like calligraphy and memory training. However, it is still only one step removed from hieroglyphics. Symbolic languages will win the race in the computer age. That is the reason the younger Chinese themselves are forgetting how to write characters even though they still know how to read. Mao recognised the problem and started the character simplification movement.

This is great! Now she can begin working on a book to teach democrats how to use the English Language. When an ignorant person like Obummer, Nose=i, or Read says " investment", or "fair" or "you can keep your plan", they could learn that confiscation at the point of a gun or jail sentence is really not historical usage. I recall that Lombardi began teaching at the Packers by showing his players the football, and saying "Gentlemen, this is a football." That John Wooden taught his basketball players how to lace up their tennis shoes. Education with pictures may be the key. I bet if we sent this unholy trinity back to preschool there is much they could learn about reading, talking and writing. They could have real pride in themselves, and keep hope (for America) alive.

Shaolan's method seems impressive to people who don't know Chinese but simply is underwhelming to the Chinese instruction community. That's because her method really won't get you very far.

For one, Chinese is a mono-syllable language and most words are made up of two (2) characters, not one. For example, she says that the character ? (Sen) means forest, and it does, but you don't use it alone and the proper word for forest is ?? (Sen Lín). Plus, she is showing very simple characters as demos but there are so many characters that are not representative of their meanings.

In reality, Chineasy is nothing more than glorified flash cards which is only popular because she got a TED talk. A much better method that will get you much further is GotCharacters (http://gotcharacters.com/) and if you really want to build fluency, you'll need to see how all of the characters work together so I would recommend Mandarin Companion graded readers (http://mandarincompanion.com/) that have stories using only 300 characters (Chinese Breeze is good too but the stories are lackluster).

Either way, Chinese education is growing and I'm glad there are more tools available for learners!

The memorization of over a thousand characters is intrinsically forbidding for a foreigner without powerful motivation. I suspect the future for interpreting written Chinese will resemble the magic spectacles of Joseph Smith (or Google glass)-- a computerized ability to recognize characters (which, to add to confusion, can be written in several different styles), and present the information in the way indicated by the user-- straight English translation, or perhaps interim forms, eg Pinyin phonetic transcription, for users interested in studying Chinese. Such spectacles can take cues from user eye movement about which characters to capture and how to interpret them.

This type of system for learning Chinese characters, based on the pictographic nature of most radicals, has been used for years in Asia. Making cute cartoons for "tree", "sun", or "moon" adds very little to what teaching tools already exist for learners of Mandarin as a first language or foreign language. Creating a system for more complex characters or those with abstract meanings would be impressive, but nothing shown in this video is remotely new.

I think this is great, ShaoLan -- I've been learning to speak Mandarin and for words and tones I'm using my own system of memory-association tricks… just by looking at the samples in your article here I've already learned a few written characters -- I'm looking forward to the iPhone app so I can learn some more :) Jia you! -Todd Lerner

Testimony to TED's declining standards. There must be 15 commercial programs promising language mastery in 10 minutes. Why would anyone believe this snake oil pitch? If you believe this, then perhaps an MBA in 5 minutes, or a Computer Science degree in 3. It took you quite a few years to learn your native language; why would a second one take only 10 minutes?

> Ray Tang Wrote: > You can spend a life time learning Chinese and still not be proficient at it.> Characters as a language is obsolete.

Tell that to over a billion Chinese. Tell that to the Japanese.

The same could be said for Latin, and yet I value the time I spent learning it.

You can spend a lifetime playing the piano and still not be proficient at it. And yet people still do so because they enjoy it. Learning a new instrument is something people recommend to keep your brain from growing old and feeble. The same is true for learning a new language, or maybe studying tai chi.

You argue best when you argue Shaolan's point. You are funny without even trying to be (and that's not a good thing).

If you can teach Chinese/Japanese characters to *new* students better than ShaoLan, well then Missouri!!! Write your own book. Do your own video. If you have published articles about teaching and/or learning in the peer-reviewed literature, then give us some references. If a reporter wrote an article about how you fascinated people with your didactic methods, then post the link.

> Aaron Turner wrote: > it appears that you use Japanese words as opposed to speak Japanese.

I have spoken several languages. I wish I remembered all the French I used to know back when I spoke it more fluently. I have had both formal Japanese language education and exposure to some very specialized Japanese which you're not likely to find in a typical Japanese dictionary. You assume too much.

> Aaron Turner wrote: > English is easier to learn than Chinese.> Most Chinese will tell you this as well.

Of course... because their first languages are Mandarin and likely at least one other dialect. If they don't pick up English early enough - and most that I work with don't - then it's forever a second language for them.

I work with Chinese all the time. I have lived with Chinese. I've worked with language experts who could speak Mandarin without an accent, even though it was a second language to them. Again... you assume too much.

English is easy for you because it is your first language. No... it isn't a tonal language. Yes... Mandarin and English have unique sets of phonemes.

Lately I've been more interested in learning Greek. Long story...

But this all misses the point. Learning characters has nothing (zero, zilch, zippo, nada) to do with *speaking* a language. Your entire argument is a non sequitur.

Perhaps you should read the article. It's about a woman who is making it easy for novices to learn Chinese characters. If you are the expert you claim to be, then you should know that the characters do not dictate the phonemes or the tones. A number of very different languages share the same characters. When I'm looking characters up, I'm usually doing so in the context of the Japanese language. Thus I hear "sho" and "dai" in my head when looking at the characters in the video. You hear something else. But it's all the same thing.

And yes, the anthropological connection is very important to me and to my martial research. But that is yet another non sequitur.

> Aaron Turner wrote: > Sorry William, but Thomas is more or less right.

Sorry, Aaron, but nothing you wrote is new to me.

Furthermore... English is one of the most difficult languages to learn. It has an exceedingly and unnecessarily large and redundant vocabulary, and there are far too many exceptions to spelling and grammatical rules.

And whether or not Mandarin is a tonal language is beside the point. So is Cantonese. So is Vietnamese.

> Aaron Turner wrote: > Full disclosure: I speak Chinese and live in China

I'm assuming you meant Mandarin.

Full disclosure: I speak some Japanese, teach martial arts, and use the language when doing so. Japan got its character set from China, so many characters are the same. And you want complicated? Japanese is a mix of characters and two (2) phonetic alphabets.

Furthermore...

Both of you are missing the point.

Chinese and Japanese have unique mental abilities because of the fact that they learned to read and write using character sets as opposed to a phonetic alphabet. Where I work, I'm in the minority having English as a first language. China's kicking our tail in math and science. (Not mine, by the way...)

Having learned some of the character sets - taught logically as ShaoLan teaches - has made it easy for me to get my brain around disparate things such as understanding the ICD-10 medical classification system, being able to teach martial arts through a parsimonious set of base movements rather than learning 1000 responses to 1000 attacks, being able to reexamine my own language and see root words within more complex words, and being able to understand and compose music.

Is it difficult to learn? Darn straight. So is going to the weight room and doing exercises to strengthen your body. Bring it, baby!

For the record... I'll take ShaoLan as a teacher over Aaron any day of the week. Darn little in this world is new. Much of what I learned in engineering school wasn't new. But it sure was nice to find that rare teacher you'd actually want to listen to rather than stay at home and read the book. ShaoLan has talent, and deserves recognition. If you can do better, Missouri!!!

ROFL at this thread and the debate over "learning" Chinese. They whole concept was to impart an easier way to READ the language with no emphasis on speaking the language. While I get the idea that merely being able to read and write a language is less than half a cup, her goal wasn't to deliver an alternative that made one fluent in spoken Mandarin.

I thought the description of associating the source of the characters with the meaning of the final written character was insightful and made sense. Some describe those as "radicals" which I assume is some term of art in the sector of language. Understanding that there are building blocks such and that their use in some modified way altered the meaning was a valuable insight. e.g. the example of 3 "women" characters being combined to illustrate the idea of fighting or anger was quite intuitive and useful for someone not pursuing adding Mandarin as a second language. While that may offend the sensibilities of the polyglots, so what?

I'm sure I'm missing out not having mastery of multiple languages, just as I'm sure that I'm happy with the tradeoffs received as compensation.

Characters are made up of radicals, and there are only so many radicals. These radicals are visual and they have meaning. Combine radicals and you get something that makes sense. Once you learn the radicals, you can see a new character and have an idea what it means. That will never be the case with a phonetic alphabet. You may be able to pronounce it, but you wouldn't have a clue what it means.

You've dug your heels in too deep to your position for you to change your mind or be swayed in any form. So in that spirit, you're right! Don't really know why I argued the point in the first place! In fact, it's on the internet and it's got a cool video so it must be true. So now it's time for me to start learning some Chinese the Chineasy way....

*facepalm* I am sure you'll jump all over this comment and I may be assuming to much (and I'm sure you'll be quick to tell me that I am), but it appears that you use Japanese words as opposed to speak Japanese. English is easier to learn than Chinese. Most Chinese will tell you this as well.

As for the point I'm trying to make, it's that this Chineasy method is just not as good as the hype. It's nothing innovative and it will only get you so far. The best thing Shaolan has going for her is her connections that landed her a TED talk.

Full FULL disclosure: I live in Shanghai, taught myself Chinese, have a business in the Chinese education sector, and have two kids enrolled in local Chinese schools.

If only it were that simple. Actually, the language moves to a much more abstract level, and very quickly, once you get beyond the "tree", "water", "person" etc. radicals.

Remember that ad for learning Spanish years ago... SOCKS, - Es o si que es - "That's what it is!" They found one mnemonic device, and then convinced untold thousands that you could learn Spanish that way. Well, sorry but it's just not that simple.

Sorry William, but Thomas is more or less right. Phonetic alphabets are much easier to learn and in reality Shaolan's method is nothing innovative nor as helpful as it seems. There are 214 radical components of Chinese however they do not always have consistent meanings and their representation can sometimes be phonetic as opposed to conveying meaning.

One thing that this entire thing misses out on is the tonal nature of Chinese. There are 4 tones and each character has a tone associated with it and if you don't say the right tone your entire meaning can be changed.

Also, Chinese is a mono-syllable language and while each character has a meaning, most "Words" in Chinese are made up of two characters, not just one. This Chineasy method is nothing more than glorified flash cards. It really won't get you very far and certainly won't help you to build fluency.

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